The game plan: Simple. Make a TV series about a Texas high school football team, that's as good as the movie Friday Night Lights, or even as excellent as the book Friday Night Lights. On second thought, that's not so simple.

Extra points: The series retains the movie's gritty semidocumentary look, and the first episode is the rare premiere that doesn't spend most of its time explaining who every single character is.

Fumbles: Maybe this doesn't matter to the rest of the country, but Plemons (who doesn't play a jock) is the only Texan in the entire cast. And the city of Odessa, which was as much a character in the movie and (especially) the book as any human, has been replaced by the fictional (well, no longer in existence) town of Dillon.

The game plan: Livingston and DeWitt play Matt and Emily, FBI crisis negotiators who also happen to be sleeping together — which becomes a point of contention among their colleagues and, quickly, between each other. Torres is their boss; Alessi, Cudlitz and Cantillo are colleagues.

Extra points: Livingston, the kind of actor for whom the word "appealing" seems to have been invented (see Swingers, Sex and the City, Band of Brothers and, especially, Office Space). Aaaaand ... that's about it.

Reminds us of: Well, it reminds them of Moonlighting. But it's a long way from that show at its peak, although at least no character is insisting on speaking in rhymes.

The game plan: Danson plays Dr. Bill Hoffman, a respected group-therapy shrink who's a bigger mess than most of his patients, but he's so good at his job that they don't know it. Finn is a suicidal nice guy; Rash is a dude who appears to be unaware that he's gay; Nakamura is a self-made millionaire who hasn't had a date in more than six years; Hunt is in love with her shrink; and Burns is a rage-aholic.

Extra points: Danson still carries a lot of good will from Cheers, and Malcolm in the Middle's Jane Kaczmarek scores some good moments as Bill's estranged wife, Anne.

Reminds us of: The '80s series Dear John, but that's probably because Burns played a troublemaking group therapy patient in that show as well.

The game plan: This comedy's original title, Let's Rob Mick Jagger, gave potential viewers a pretty good idea of what the show was about. Then it was changed (see below). Anyway, Logue plays a schlub of a janitor who has an epiphany one night and decides to put together a crew of misfits to rob ... well, see the original title.

Extra points: Logue is always a welcome presence, even if he never can seem to find the right vehicle for his easygoing talents. Jagger appears in the premiere, and his giddy celebration of his success on an MTV Cribs-style show-within-the-show is highly amusing.

The game plan: Liotta plays Bobby Stevens, a master thief. Guess what? He's leading a double life, and although his wife (Madsen) has her suspicions, she's not 100 percent sure what he's up to — or maybe she's just pretending not to be sure. He wants to quit, and just become an ordinary suburban dad. But he's gotta get that one big score.

Extra points: The preview episode had a slick, cinematic look and a tough, suspenseful caper. Baker's cool killer has quite an entrance (spoiled by the promos), and he pretty much steals the first installment.

Fumbles: It has pretty unpleasant characters, which works fine on cable but might not do so well on CBS, especially when it follows shows with more honorable people such as NCIS and The Unit.

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